Church of Our Lady Victorious, Prague

A small wax statue of a child, forty-seven centimetres high, made in Spain four hundred years ago, sits in a glass case on the right-hand side of a plain Carmelite church in Malá Strana. Copies of it are venerated in Manila, Bogotá, Kerala and a thousand parishes in between. Almost nobody who comes to see it notices that the church itself was built by German Lutherans, taken from them by force after a battle, and renamed in thanks for the defeat of the people who paid for it.

A Protestant church with a Catholic name

It was built in 1611–1613 for the German-speaking Lutheran community of Prague, and consecrated on 21 July 1613. The architect is traditionally given as Giovanni Maria Filippi, an Italian who served as court architect to Rudolf II — the Carmelites themselves say he “is believed to be” the architect, so treat it as attribution rather than record. It is routinely described as the first Baroque church in Prague; the honest version is that it is among the earliest, an early Baroque building standing on Renaissance foundations, which is how the Carmelites put it.

Then 8 November 1620: the Battle of the White Mountain, an hour’s walk west of here, where the Bohemian Protestant estates were destroyed in a couple of hours. Ferdinand II confiscated the church from its Lutheran congregation and gave it to the Discalced Carmelites, and on 8 September 1624 it was rededicated to Our Lady Victorious, in thanksgiving for that victory.

Say that plainly, because it is the most interesting thing about the building and no plaque inside will tell you: this is a Counter-Reformation trophy. The name commemorates a battle that Czech national memory treats as the beginning of three hundred years of subjection — the doba temna, the age of darkness.

The church turned round

Between 1636 and 1644 the Carmelites rebuilt it, and in the process moved the facade to the opposite end, so that the front now faces Karmelitská, the main street, with the monastery added along the south side; the new front was modelled on a Carmelite church in Rome, and the tower went up in 1669. So the nave you walk into runs the reverse of the way it was built, and the Lutheran fabric is still underneath it.

In 1784 Joseph II dissolved the monastery and the Knights of Malta took over, bringing the parish with them from Our Lady under the Chain a few streets away. The Communist state seized the property in 1950. The Discalced Carmelites came back on 2 July 1993, after two hundred years away, at the invitation of Archbishop Vlk, and they run it now as an international community — Czech, Indian and Italian friars, and Mass in four languages.

The visitor's cheat sheet

The Infant Jesus

What it actually is

A wooden core, surfaced in coloured wax, about 47cm high, made in Spain in the sixteenth century by an unknown hand. The lower half is enclosed in a silver case to protect the fragile wax, which is why the figure appears to have no legs. The Carmelites note Moorish features in the face and note that the hair was originally dark and curly — both consistent with a Spanish origin.

The left hand holds the imperial orb, surmounted by a cross: dominion over the world, in the hand of a small child. The right hand is raised in blessing — not holding a sceptre, as half the souvenir shops will tell you. The historic crown is displayed separately, above.

How it got here

The family tradition runs that St Teresa of Ávila, who promoted devotion to the childhood of Jesus across Spain, gave the statue to a friend whose daughter was marrying into Bohemia. The Carmelites themselves label this a legend, and the chronology strains; take it as the story the devotion tells about itself.

What is documented is that María Maximiliana Manrique de Lara brought the image to Bohemia on her marriage to Vratislav of Pernštejn in the mid-1550s, and that she gave it as a wedding present to her daughter Polyxena of Lobkowicz. In 1628 Polyxena gave it to the Carmelites here, who were destitute, with words that have been repeated ever since: “I bring you my dearest possession. Honour this image and you shall never be poor.”

Thrown out with the rubbish

In 1631 Saxon troops took Prague. The friars fled, the monastery was plundered, and the statue was damaged and thrown out on a rubbish heap with its hands broken off. It lay lost for about seven years.

In 1637 a friar named Cyril of the Mother of God found it in the debris and had it restored, with new hands made. Two versions of what he is said to have heard are in circulation: the one on every souvenir, “the more you honour me, the more I will bless you”, and an older and better-attested one — “Have pity on me and I will have pity on you. Give me my hands, and I will give you peace.” The second is the one the reference works carry.

The statue was crowned in 1655, and the coronation is still kept each year on the first Sunday of May, when the figure wears royal vestments with ermine. It was moved to its present prominent position on the right of the nave in the eighteenth century, because of the crowds; the shrine’s own accounts give the year as 1741 in one place and 1776 in another.

The wardrobe

The figure is dressed, and the dressing is done by the Carmelite Sisters of the Infant Jesus roughly ten times a year, following the colours of the liturgical year: green in Ordinary Time, white at Christmas and Easter, purple in Lent and Advent, red in Holy Week and at Pentecost, blue for Marian feasts, and royal ermine at the coronation feast. It has been done according to liturgical norms since about 1713.

How many robes there are depends who you ask: the shrine and the city tourist board say around three hundred, the reference works around a hundred — probably a hundred historic robes within a larger modern collection. They come from everywhere. There is one from Empress Maria Theresa, green with gold embroidery, traditionally said to have been worked by her own hand — a tradition, not a documented fact. There is a crown given by Benedict XVI on his visit in 2009. There is a robe donated by the novelist Paulo Coelho. And there are vestments from South Korea, the Philippines, Poland and Italy, which is the clearest possible map of where this devotion actually lives.

How a small statue went round the world

This is the part that explains the crowd you will be standing in. Copies began leaving Prague in the seventeenth century — the first wave to Poland from about 1680 — and kept going: to South Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and to churches in the United States and across Africa built deliberately on the model of this one.

Today the living devotion is strongest in Latin America, the Philippines, India and Italy, and you can read that straight off the noticeboard: Mass here is said in Czech, English, Spanish and Italian, the friars are Czech, Indian and Italian, and the robes in the museum arrive from Manila and São Paulo and Seoul. For a great many visitors this is not a sight at all but a place they have known since childhood, six thousand miles away, and have come a long way to kneel in front of. It is worth registering that before you raise a camera: on any given morning a good proportion of the people in this church are pilgrims, and the twenty Europeans photographing the case are the tourists.

What else to see

The interior

Do not expect the gold-and-fresco Baroque of St Nicholas up the hill. The scheme here is black wood and gilding against white walls — sober, Carmelite, and a deliberate contrast with everything else in Malá Strana.

The main altar is a Baroque triumphal arch of 1717, with statues of St Teresa of Ávila and St John of the Cross, the two great Carmelite reformers. The large canvas is an Intercession of the Virgin Mary, painted in 1641 by Antonín Stevens of Steinfels. Look higher: at the top of the altar, among carved war trophies, is a small painting copied from one which, by tradition, was carried at the Battle of the White Mountain — so a battle relic sits at the summit of the altar, and the church’s name and its art tell the same story.

The side altars are arranged by theme — Carmelite saints down the left, the family of Jesus down the right — and the font, pulpit, altar and cross are set along the main axis on purpose, as a catechism you walk through. There are paintings here attributed to Petr Brandl, and a sacristy with seventeenth-century cabinets that is not always open.

The museum, upstairs

Free, and reached by a spiral staircase from the front of the church, to the right of the altar. The ground floor holds a collection of nativity scenes from every continent; above it is the wardrobe, with the historic rococo crown, the Maria Theresa robe, Benedict XVI’s crown and garments sent from around the world. It takes fifteen minutes and it is the part of the visit people remember.

The catacombs you cannot see

Beneath the church are burial chambers described by the prior as the largest in Prague, holding the mummified remains of Carmelite friars and lay benefactors. They are not part of a normal visit — opened occasionally, or by arrangement. People read about them and arrive expecting to go down; ask, but do not plan on it.

Tickets and tours

Don't miss

• The museum upstairs Free, modestly signposted, up a spiral stair to the right of the altar — and the better half of the visit.
• Maria Theresa's robe Green and gold, and said to have been embroidered by the empress herself.
• The orb and the blessing Left hand the world, right hand raised. Not a sceptre, whatever the shops sell.
• The 1717 high altar With Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, and a painting copied from one carried at the White Mountain.
• The name over the door Our Lady Victorious — a church taken from Lutherans and renamed for the battle that took it.
• The nativity scenes From every continent, on the museum's ground floor, and a quiet demonstration of how far this devotion travelled.

Insider tips

Come at Christmas, Easter or the coronation feast (the first Sunday of May) if you want the spectacular vestments. The photographs online show white or ermine; turn up in October and you will find plain green.

Time your visit around Mass rather than through it. Sightseeing stops during services — but the Sunday noon Mass in English is the best thing on offer here, and the Thursday evening one is quiet.

Do not confuse it with the other Marian churches nearby: there is a different Our Lady Victorious out at the White Mountain itself, and Our Lady under the Chain is two minutes away and was this church’s parish partner after 1784.

Pair it rather than making a trip of it. Thirty minutes here, then the Lennon Wall, then Kampa, makes a coherent hour and a half; coming across the city for a small statue does not.

Where to stay and eat nearby

Karmelitská is a tram street with ordinary prices by Prague standards; a minute west, the lanes around Maltézské náměstí and down onto Kampa are much prettier places to sit, and the riverside at Kampa is one of the calmest corners in the centre. Malá Strana is the nicest part of the city to stay in and quieter at night than the Old Town.

More churches in Prague

• St Nicholas, Malá Strana — three minutes up the same street, and the opposite of this in every way.
• The Loreta — up on Hradčany, and another Counter-Reformation shrine, with a carillon.
• Our Lady before Týn — across the river, and the church the Hussites lost.

See all the churches worth visiting in Prague →